NJ Must Make “much more effort in [GHG] reductions“
Annual Emissions Reductions Need To Be Ramped Up By 5 TIMES
This morning’s email brought the latest report from Rutgers: “NJ Climate Change Resource Center: Spring 2025 Update”
I’ve long criticized that Center for being far too close to the NJ DEP, in terms of:
1) the topics of their issue focus and research agenda, including shared data and methods;
2) a close correspondence in the timing and content of the issuance of Reports and events with respect to DEP regulatory proposals;
3) the failure to critically assess DEP’s progress in meeting emission reduction goals;
4) the reluctance to engage “policy” and regulatory issues; and
5) excessively close personal, professional, and institutional relationships with DEP.
With that critical context, of course the headline of their latest report caught my eye, as it contradicted my prior core criticisms and assumptions:
“Is NJ Meeting Its GHG Emissions Reduction Targets? A New Report Looks at the Data”
So we hit the link and opened the Report to “look at the data”.
Wow. I didn’t have to wade through hundreds of pages of obfuscation and interpolate from the Attachments to get to the question. Right on page one, Rutgers makes an unusually clear and harsh assessment (bold mine):
Using 2021’s net emissions from the New Jersey Greenhouse Gas Inventory (Barry and Barr, 2024), annual emissions reductions would need to be consistently about 4.1 MMT CO2 eq per year between 2021 and 2030. In the 5 years before the COVID 19 pandemic (where emissions dipped and was therefore not included), the average annual emissions reduction from 2014 to 2019 was only 0.9 MMT CO2eq/yr, indicating that this interim goal will require much more effort in reductions.
Catch that? “much more effort in reductions” is an understatement.
What the data mean is that the State is only making 21% of the annual reductions to meet the State goals – just a fifth of what’s necessary. Current emissions reductions would need to be ramped up by 5 TIMES, so yes, that would take “much more effort”.
And this is a rosy scenario.
The use of “net emissions” – which is NOT the basis of emissions reductions goals set forth in the NJ Global Warming Response Act – reduces actual real emissions and allows DEP to rely on optimistic carbon storage and sequestration estimates and projections. This “net” approach also could allow sham technologies like carbon capture to produce fake net emissions reductions.
I also suspect that Rutgers relied on DEP’s emissions inventory methods, which, among other things downplays the effects of methane by using the long term timeframe, not the 20 year timeframe mandated by NJ law.
The Report also notes that some emissions are not included (@ p.43)
these estimates of New Jersey’s emissions do not include emissions generating activities from out-of-state due to imported goods and services but do include emissions from out-of-state solid waste disposal and electricity importation (Barry and Barr, 2024).
Imports from China and other countries are huge, as the current debate on the Trump tariffs reveal. With huge imports come huge emissions that are not accounted for.
We also note this related gap in emissions inventory: (@p. 39)
The Climate Action Tracker does note that this net-zero goal excludes emissions from international aviation and shipping (CAT, 2022).
The report, however, does pull the typical punches in downplaying the emissions profile and reliability of assessing DEP’s progress in inventorying and reducing emissions: (@ p.43)
Additionally, a comprehensive and granular survey of current and planned activities to reduce emissions in New Jersey would be helpful in assessing current action toward achieving these goals. This would include assessing, sector-by-sector, current actions and accounting for each project’s projected impact to New Jersey’s net emissions. This approach would provide a “real world” check on progress to the pathways laid out in the 80×50 report.
There is no “granular” analysis of emissions data and no analysis of actual source specific emissions or “current [DEP] actions” to reduce those emissions. Accordingly, this Report amounts to a whitewash. These shortcomings completely undermine the Rutgers report, which totally relies on DEP data and DEP methods and the DEP’s 80X50 Report, not more “granular” and reliable data and methods.
The DEP has failed to produce any “granular survey” or “sector by sector” data, because this would be used to hold carbon polluters accountable, and that’s the last thing that politically powerful polluters want.
Such a “granular survey” and “sector by sector” data and emissions reduction program analysis would demonstrate that DEP has failed miserably in reducing emissions and does NOT REGULATE the overwhelming majority of GHG emissions (more than 90%).
Getting back to the basic question posed in the Rutgers email (i.e. “Is NJ Meeting Its GHG Emissions Reduction Targets” ), we find that this entire question is assumed away, by ONE WORD: “IF” (@p. 41):
“If New Jersey implements the pathways proposed in this [the 80×50] report, which incorporates the strategies of the 2019 EMP, GHG emissions can be reduced to 29.8 MMT CO2e by 2050. This level of reductions, combined with a projected 10.8 MMT additional reduction from carbon sequestration, would bring net emissions in 2050 to 19 MMT CO2e, achieving the 80×50 goal.”
If? “can be”? “would bring”?
The Report assumes away the question it was supposed to answer! Are you kidding me?
Finally, in terms of any “real world check on progress”, we note what just could be the largest caveat of all time (@p.38):
“It is not the purpose of this report to assess how feasible these goals are.”
Flawed and limited as they are, please keep this Report’s main conclusions in mind the next time DEP Commissioner LaTourette starts spouting slogans.
NJ needs to make “much more effort in [GHG] reductions”.
[End Note: A reader commented and raised questions – here is my reply:
1. the carbon sequestration numbers conflict with DEP’s data on land use/land cover and rate of forest loss, and are based on projections and unrealistically optimistic assumptions Rutgers Report: (page 9):
“Currently, the NJ Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) estimates that New Jersey sequesters 8.1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent units (MMT CO2eq) per year (about 7.5% of gross emissions in 2015) and could be increased to 10.8 MMT CO2eq by 2050; however, this increase would effectively require utilizing all available open space for sequestration (Barr et al., 2020).3 Given the future need for negative emissions, other strategies, such as investing in sequestration activities out-of-state or technological carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere, may be necessary to meet reduction targets past 2050.”
2. With respect to methane – I disagree with you when you write:
“The problem is that its official GHG numbers (including the GWRA targets) are still only based on the 100-year numbers.”
The 2020 methane law very clearly mandates use of 20 year timeframe, and this includes assessment of progress towards the GWRA targets (which are NOT enforceable standards):
“1. a. Whenever the Department of Environmental Protection, the Board of Public Utilities, or any other State agency calculates a global warming potential for the purposes of assessing the global warming impact of a greenhouse gas, the Department of Environmental Protection, the Board of Public Utilities, or other State agency shall use a 20-year time horizon.”
https://pub.njleg.state.nj.us/Bills/2018/PL19/319_.PDF
3. In terms of the causal mechanisms of any emissions reductions that have occurred, although I haven’t broken them down, I assume that a significant portion is based on fuel switching from coal to natural gas and that this switching resulted from market forces, not EMP policy or DEP regulations or RGGI cap and trade.
As you know, the estimates of emissions reductions associated from that switching are highly misleading, as the natural gas emission factors fail to consider lifecycle emissions, including leaks. See Cornell Prof. Howarth’s latest on that:
https://scijournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ese3.1934
So, the reality is even worse than I portrayed.
W